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Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Jack T. Chick died at the age of 92 in Glendale, California. Chick was infamous for publishing fundamentalist Christian tracts in the form of comic books for six decades and distributed over 750 million copies and has been translated into over 100 languages.

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Chick's personal paranoia carried over into his funny paper tracts. While he railed against rock and roll, homosexuality and witchcraft, Chick saved most of his spite for Catholicism. If one were to believe Chick. Catholicism was created by Satan, that Popes take their marching orders from the devil. Chick blamed the Jesuits for starting the American Civil War (and that the "men in black" backed the Confederacy) as well as the Ku Klux Klan (which hated Catholics).

In addition, Chick claimed that the Catholic Church supposedly started Nazism, Communism, Islam, Masonry, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the New Age movement. Chick pinned the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy on the Vatican as well as the Holocaust. Continuing in this craziness, Chick surmised that the Vatican runs the United Nations and global finances and the Illuminati.. Amongst the biggest whoppers was that the Vatican has a super computer that tracks the names of every Protestant in the world.

Naturally, in the end times Chick proclaimed that the Antichrist would be the last Pope. It must have really freaked Chick out that Pope Francis is from the Society of Jesus (i.e. a Jesuit). No surprise that Catholic anti-defamation groups chronicled Chick tracts for over three decades.

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One of Jack Chick's early successes was an early 1960s tract of a playboy who dies and is forced to watch all of his life's foibles on a big screen before the pearly gates of Heaven. Perhaps during this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Chick's imagined screening of "This Was Your Life" at the Pearl Gates Cinescreen won't be taken as "The Nightmare World of Jack Chick" but will be viewed as a Comedy of Manners.

Friday, 14 October 2016

Wikileaks has released some batches of John Podesta's emails which reveal that Hillary Clinton confidants have some scathing views of Catholics. Some had suggested that there should be a "Catholic Spring" to overthrow "a middle ages dictatorship" and impose a democratic cult which honors gender equality (and presumably progressive approaches to hot button social issues). Other emails mocked how conservative Catholics were pseudo-intellectuals who spouted sophisticated sounding nonsense.Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput responded to these scathing critques stemming from the highest echelons of Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign.

It is quite a clever turn of phrase of Archbishop Chaput to quip:"In a nation where 'choice' is now the unofficial state religion, the menu for dinner is remarkably small." Chaput pithily impeaches America's obsession with choice (abortion), reflects on dangers to America's tradition of religious liberty while lamenting the paucity of choices to be elected Commander-in-Chief.Not withstanding the sardonic style of the riposte, Archbishop Chaput has consistently eviscerated both major party Presidential candidates, as seen from his recent speech at Notre Dame University.We love to label in order to create intellectual order in our minds. But terms like liberal and conservative do not translate well into Church politics. Archbishop Chaput can be considered a conservative in Church circles, as he is cautiously embracing implementation of the New Mercy contained in Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. However, it would be mistaken to automatically assume that Chaput is a political conservative or would ever vote for Donald Trump.It is a pity that Archbishop Chaput was passed over to be named a Cardinal by Pope Francis' recent announcement for the November 19th consistory. Philadelphia, like the large Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is traditionally blessed with a Cardinal. Pope Francis, however, chose three "red hats" which went to Dallas, Indianapolis and to Archbishop Blase Cupich from the longstanding Cardinal seat of Chicago.

Our Holy Patron

GUILD PRAYER

God our Father, source of life and freedom, through Your Holy Spirit you gave the Carmelite, Titus Brandsma the courage to affirm human dignity even in the midst of suffering and degrading persecution.

Grant us that same spirit so that, in refusing all compromise with error we may always and everywhere give coherent witness to Your abiding presence among us.

We ask this through Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

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Members of The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma are Catholic bloggers and users of the new media who seek to share their faith online. We are inspired by the vision of the New Evangelisation called for by successive Popes.

"Thanks to the new communications media, the Lord can walk the streets of our cities and, stopping before the threshold of our homes and our hearts, say once more: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20)" Pope Benedict XVI's Message for the 44th World Communications Day.

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Contributions to this blog are made by men and women who are members of a Guild for Catholic bloggers under the patronage of Blessed Titus Brandsma. Contributors are loyal to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and to the Successor of St Peter. The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma blog aims to raise the profile of the Catholic Faith as well as to inform, inspire and educate the laity and evangelise the United Kingdom. Contributors will write on a range of subjects including theology, liturgy, canon law and apologetics.